So I know I’ve been a little quiet lately. Much of my creative energy has been tied up on a few things, and The Boy has been hogging the computer. He’s gearing up to go back to college, and tracking down books and writing up scholarship applications and stuff is sucking up a lot of our time, really.

I have a few little pieces of erotica in the works, so don’t totally bail on me yet. We just don’t want any crossover mistakes.

I deserve this scholarship because I would make a great student. I would see you after class, in your office, and I would be wondering what you are wearing under that dress, how your flesh would feel under my hand. How your tongue might…

Yeah, that might cause a few problems. (On the other hand…)

Anyway, hang in there just a bit longer. We’re not on extended hiatus or nuthin’.

I admit, I’ve been busy and coasting for a week or so, and haven’t really put up any of my best stuff. Then Dr. PZ went and put up an open enrollment thread, and I got all excited and my brain shut down and I just threw up a comment without thinking.

I should have put up a good post first, to make a good impression, damn it.

It’s like stealing a first kiss from that hottie and suddenly realizing that you just had liver and onions for lunch.

It’s long been the policy of the Republican party at large, and the George W. Bush administration in specific, to screw with science and edit out the parts of it they don’t like. They’ve done it at the EPA, NIH, NASA, wherever they’ve been able to get a political hack to use as a mouthpiece between the scientists and the people.

U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney’s office was involved in removing statements on health risks posed by global warming from a draft of a health official’s Senate testimony last year, a former senior government environmental official said on Tuesday.

The former official, Jason Burnett, made the assertion and described similar incidents in a three-page letter to Senator Barbara Boxer, a California Democrat who is the chairwoman of the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. He then stood with her at a news conference at which she excoriated the Bush administration.

“History will judge this Bush administration harshly for recklessly covering up a real threat to the people they are supposed to protect,” Boxer said.

Only if we manage to get them out of power before they rewrite it, Senator. What have you done lately to facilitate that?

In 2006, We The People of the United States of America, as a group, decided we had finally had enough of the raping of the Constitution by the Republican party. In no uncertain terms we threw them down from their high and lofty pedestal of power, from whence they had been dictating this republic into a theocracy.

It should have told you something. Apparently, you’re as deaf as a rock to the subtleties of a sea-change election. Let me make this a little more clear for you then.

Stop. Get up off your knees, Congresspeople and Senators of These United States. The time for sychophancy and capitulation is long over. The man in the White House is no longer the defacto dictator in these parts. You are not required to march to the beat of his drum.

End the “Domestic Surveillance Program“, which is clearly a violation of the Constitution. You remember that thing, right? The piece of paper that stands as a wall betwixt us and him? The supreme law of the land that he’s been ignoring since he took up residency in the nation’s capital? Remember that? Remember your promises to us that you would put an end to his shredding of the contents of that document?

The bill never mentions that evolution is almost universally accepted among scientists as the basis for modern biology.

And it skips right over the key fact that the effort is backed by the same archconservatives who’ve trying to force religiously based doubts over the theory, either in the form of creationism or its successor “intelligent design,” into science classrooms for years now.

Those efforts have been consistently rejected by the courts, which explains another artful bit of misdirection: The bill explicitly disavows the promotion of any particular set of religious beliefs. That directly contradicts the goal of its most ardent supporters, including the Louisiana Family Forum, which in and of itself should raise plenty of questions over just what was going on here.

Still, the obfuscation made it hard to argue the merits of the bill, and in the end, even many of the lawmakers who knew better threw up their hands and voted yes.

When asked about Darwinism, Jindal responds with his own fuzzy catch phrase, which he trotted out on the campaign trail last fall and again during a recent appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation.” He claims he wants students to be exposed to “the very best science.”

On the television show, he went further, arguing that he didn’t want facts and theories withheld from students out of “political correctness.” It was all part of a circular response to a direct question that he never answered: whether he himself has doubts about the theory of evolution.

Please click the little Digg icon and Digg this story up. Stephanie Grace’s story needs national attention.

Dr. Richard Lenski, Hannah Professor of Microbial Ecology at Michigan State University, recently published the results of a twenty year long experiment with E. coli where he definitively demonstrated some really cool evolutionary adaptations. The results were subsequently discussed in a NewScientist article.

Among other really neat results, one of the descendant colonies of E. coli developed a mutation that enabled it to feed off citrate, part of the solution in which it was growing, while other colonies, also descended from the same parent colony, did not.

The paper is well documented and well executed by all accounts of scientists in the relevant fields who’ve read the paper. It’s elegant, it’s meticulous, and it’s conclusive.

Infamously dunderheaded creationist Andrew Schlafly, creator of Conservapedia (AKA the Idiot’s Alternative to Reality), was not about to stand for the results of said experiment. In what appears to have been an attempt to intimidate Dr. Lenski into altering his conclusion as far as I can tell, he fired off an Email, ostensibly challenging the results. Unfortunately for Schlafly, Dr. Lenski was neither intimidated nor deceived into believing that Schlafly either actually read the paper or had the faintest clue about what he was blathering.

He didn’t know I was coming, it was a surprise from his readers. Steph and Mike and Laurisa had approached me with the idea, and we’d all chipped in what we could. Fortunately, our plan called for us to come up with enough cash for only one plane ticket. Kate wouldn’t need one.

The guy at the airport was somewhat hesitant to check Greg‘s gift for me, being oversized and against the rules and all, but I had batted my eyelashes just so and whispered things in his ear to convince him to “forget” about all that airline mumbo jumbo.

The DHS girl had picked up that something was amiss, but a strategically placed index finger run from just behind her ear down to her throat while I explained the situation alleviated her concerns. She was suddenly quite helpful, and half a ton of red tape miraculously disappeared. It turns out she was a fan of Greg’s. …and mine.

Seems some psycho fundy named John Freshwater was “teaching” some interesting things in his public school classroom in Mt. Vernon, OH. Today, the school board voted unanimously to kick his sorry ass to the curb. See that picture? That’s not teaching. That’s abuse. (At least one family has filed a federal lawsuit against Freshwater and the district.)

The Board’s resolution cited four basic grounds for its resolution [to terminate Freshwater]:

1. Freshwater burned crosses in students’ arms using a high voltage, high frequency leak detection device, ignoring the manufacturer’s safety instructions associated with the device.

2. Freshwater taught material on thermodynamics, the Big Bang, the age of the earth, and the periodic table that is not in the approved curriculum or American Content Standards. Mr. Freshwater also taught ID and creationism in contravention of the curriculum and the First Amendment to the Constitution. He did so in direct contradiction of school board policy and administrative instructions. The resolution noted that Freshwater’s 2003 request to teach those materials had been denied by the board, so subsequently teaching them was insubordination.

3. In monitoring the Fellowship of Christian Athletes Freshwater exceeded his monitoring role by conducting prayers, recommending speakers, and generally taking a directive role rather than a monitoring role.

4. Mr. Freshwater did not remove all religious materials from his classroom as instructed by school administrators and in fact brought additional materials in to “make a point.”